> > What we need are a few complete unifonts in consistent styles with no
> > differentiation between regions. If there is a regional bias, then one
> > bias per font, not a mixture.
> >
> > However, Japanese users might prefer a different unifont than Chinese
> > readers, and in case of multilingual mixed text, as in C+J textbooks, tags
> > can be used to load different fonts for different languages.
>
> I suspect you don't understand difference between Variant and typeface.
> IMO, CJK people can have a common typeface (i.e., boldness, serif
> policy, and so on). However, CJK people cannot have a common Variant.
> "Variant" is a technical term to indicate a nature of Han Ideogram,
> not a daily noun.
That is what I meant: we need a few complete CJK unifonts with different
regional bias (variant selection) for each, or possibly a single font with
the variant selection integrated into the font.
It is strange that Han Unification went half-way like this so that most
variants have code-points but some don't. To avoid user complaints we now
need somewhat complicated variant handling concepts that could have
supported a more radical unification. But we all know that
standardisation always has political aspects and perfect solutions are
hardly ever achieved. We also know that it is possible to conduct
political agitation against the achieved compromises under the guise of
wanting to address some "urgent practical problems". E.g. destabilising
the agreed-upon Han Unification compromise under the guise of new planes
that address some minute but of course very urgent variant problems. In
those cases the aim of the whole work is more to send a political message
than to solve real practical problems. This may not be the case here, but
your rhetoric may have contributed to making it look as if it were the
case.
For those who want a better han character coding system, Morioka san's
UTF2000 project should be a good place to invest their energies. I am
actually interested as well.
> If we were have a common typeface _and_ common Variant, we could
> have a common font for CJK. However, this is not true.
>
> Sure, I agree with your sentence, with using proper term to avoid
> confusion and substituting "Japanese users might prefer" with "Japanese
> users need".
Imho it is something inbetween. More than just preference but less than
necessity. What about saying "will complain"? Then we can keep clear of
the political flamewar and get the same practical results.
> For example, a Chinese textbook for Japanese people will have a
> sentence like:
> <U+76F4 in Japanese style> is written as <U+76F4 in Chinese style>
> in Chinese.
>
> A Japanese textbook for non-Japanese people will have a sentence like:
>
> <U+76F4 in Japanese style> means straight or immediate. Please
> note you should not use <U+76F4 in Chinese style> if you'd like
> to communicate with Japanese people because they cannot read it.
s/"cannot read"/"will complain about"/
> Such texts can be written using language tags.
right.
-phm
-
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
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